


tangled and then floating free

by deuteroscopies



Series: the prophet and the king [28]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Break Up, F/M, Gender Roles, Heteronormativity, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22127230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuteroscopies/pseuds/deuteroscopies
Summary: Ruby needs Ephram to help her with a potentially dangerous task. Things go sideways -- but not in the way she imagined.
Relationships: Freddie Watts/Ephram Pettaline
Series: the prophet and the king [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1551673
Kudos: 1





	tangled and then floating free

**Author's Note:**

> >   
>  Freddie Watts = Tom Hardy FC, Ephram Pettaline = Boyd Holbrook FC. These stories are set in the supernatural town of Soapberry Springs, in the Pacific Northwest. Freddie is a fairy con man from London, with cobalt-coloured dragonfly wings and silver fairy dust, who has a Japanese Chin familiar named Oliver; Ephram is a witch from impoverished East Kentucky who shares his body with a demon called Anaxis and has green magic of his own.
>> 
>> [the prophet and the king 'verse tumblr](http://theprophetandtheking.tumblr.com/)  
> 

{Over the intercom system from the boathouse}: Ephram, have you been down here lately?  
  
INT: What? No, you know I don’t trouble myself with boats. Something up?  
  
{Intercom:} “Yeah. You could say that. If you get a second you mind comin’ to take a look?”  
  
Ruby had been halfway through her second cigarette by the time she decided that simply staring at their Sun Seeker yacht, trying to figure out how in the hell it was floating in the middle of the inlet behind their house, instead of dry docked as it should be, was getting her no closer to figuring out just what in the hell had happened. She’d come down to the boathouse for a smoke after dinner, and found the docking system smashed to bits. Well, not smashed so much as wrenched from it’s moorings. The metal was twisted and crushed, the anchoring system was nearly pulled free of the thick wooden beams up above, and the door to the bay had been forced open. From the inside.  
  
Though the yacht itself, from what Ruby could see from the end of the dock, was unharmed. The sun was starting to set, however, and she couldn’t see it all that well. And other than the dry dock system, nothing else was harmed, and nothing was missing; she’d checked. She /hadn’t/ checked the security cameras yet - though oddly enough nothing had tripped the high end alarm system. That was strange in itself. But what troubled her most was that no one - not even their nosy neighbors - had heard anything. Something like this would have made a hell of a lot of noise. At least it should have.  
  
So she stood there, exhaling smoke through her nose, as perplexed as she had been when she first arrived. “Huh,” was all she’d said before moving to press the intercom button that would buzz back to the house.  
  
Ephram made his way down to the boathouse at a “ _honey this is weird although I don’t know if it’s dangerous yet_ ” pace, reaching there before he realized he’d brought his half-full coffee mug with him.  
  
He was no sailor – boating wasn’t a thing in the Appalachians, obviously – but the dramatic destruction of the wrecked structure paired with the sight of the boat (he never called it a yacht) itself sitting serenely out on the water as if it had been plucked out of the boathouse and set there while the place got smashed.  
  
Suddenly, Ephram was pretty glad he still had his coffee. It looked like he was gonna need it.  
  
“So, uh,” he said, going over to stand next to Ruby, “either our boat is KITT and can drive itself, or this is a mighty strange version of the Amityville Horror.”  
  
Ruby kept looking out at the boat as she heard Ephram’s slightly faster than normal - but not panicked - bootfalls on the wooden floor. She flicked her cigarette into the water. “Oh it can self-navigate,” Ruby said in an exhale of smoke. “Just not off the dry-dock.” A tiny grin lifted the corner of her mouth at the options Ephram laid out. “And would it suprise you? Fuckin’…” she waved a hand, “poltergeist and spirits an’ whatever… out to mess with a half-million dollar playtoy just because they can.”  
  
Ruby turned her head to smile softly at him. “Would be a good story for the Bugle.” Pushing off the corner she was leaned against, Ruby moved back to the twisted docking system. She stared up at the thick slabs of metal that cradled the Sun Seeker when it wasn’t in the water.  
  
“What d’you make o’ this?” she asked soon enough, standing on her tiptoes and running a hand over a section of metal she could reach. It came away covered in a sticky, grayish-black goo. Ruby stretched it between her fingers where it arched in thick, opaque strings. “It’s all over.”  
  
“Well, first of all–” Ephram grabbed a rag from one of the workbenches in the boathouse, going over and taking Ruby’s wrist in one hand while he wiped the gunk off her fingers with the other, “–maybe don’t go touchin’ weird substances left behind after unexplainable incidents.” He shook his head, gently exasperated. “Honestly, honey. Even when it don’t involve ghosty shit, not touchin’ on unidentified goop is just common sense.”  
  
With Ruby’s fingers wiped, Ephram wrapped his hand around hers, a whisper of his gleaming green magic slipping through his wife’s hand. “You’re a human, Ruby Scarlett,” he said, cupping the back of Ruby’s dark head and kissing above one eyebrow. “I know you see everybody round you lookin’ like we charge headlong, but we don’t. We know what we’re capable of dealing’ with.”  
  
Kissing her one more time when he felt his magic had probably cleaned through any residual nastiness from the glop, Ephram moved to check out the substance himself. He didn’t have to tiptoe, of course, and although Ruby wasn’t that much shorter Ephram’s extra inches gave him a better view of the damage from his natural vantage point. Frowning, he said, “Hard to tell. Might be something the critter what done this has as secretions – if it _was_ a critter – or could be a residue from some magic worked.”  
  
Ruby watched the black goo disappear from her skin under Ephram’s attentions. “Didn’t feel dangerous,” she remarked quietly, which was the truth.  
  
Her eyes closed as his warm green magic pulsed through her skin, and her free hand rose to hook two fingers through the loops of his jeans. It felt good, his hand around hers, magic fizzing through the delicate bones of her fingers, the tiny blood vessels and capillaries, and rolling through the muscles of her palm. It was soothing, and when it was gone, Ruby sighed quietly.  
  
Her grip on his jeans tightened as he kissed her brow - the gesture easing the tightness that had held itself as a permanent fixture across her shoulders these last few days - and she tried her very best not to let his words bother her, knowing he didn’t mean it like it sounded. But her emotions were still pressed thin and scraped raw, despite outward appearances. “And I don’t?” she asked - about people knowing what they could handle - as he moved to look at the black goop. “Guess I ain’t had enough reminders.” Her tone was dry and filled with sarcasm - not bitter or self-depricating - though the comment was mostly said to herself.  
  
As Ephram gave the dry docking a closer look, Ruby moved towards the edge of the walkway again, peering down into the water. There was no iridescent trail across the surface of the water. “Well, it certainly don’t look like oil,” Ruby sighed, arms crossed over her chest against a sudden chill.  
  
“Still, we need to get out there. Make sure the hull ain’t punctured.” The Sun Seeker had started to drift further out. “Can your magic push it back towards us? Otherwise we’re gonna have to get wet.” Ruby had seen Ephram manipulate stone and earth, but she wasn’t sure about water. And until they figured out what had done this, Ruby didn’t fancy having to go for a swim to retrieve the yacht.  
  
“No,” Ephram replied simply, “you don’t know what you’re capable of dealing with.” He said it as an inarguable truth, with a tone of authority that had only increased once he’d been appointed Sheriff, but sighed afterwards. “Honey, it ain’t no sin being who and what you are. You’re a human in a supernatural town. You can't conceive of what’s out there and how vulnerable you are to it all. And I mean, babe…” Ephram tried to think of a gentle way to say it, but came up with nothing so he just spoke plainly. “You ain’t exactly the caution and common sense type. You can have all the reminders life throws at you but it seems ain’t none of em are like to stick.”  
  
He wasn’t trying to be cruel or disparaging, but after seeing how Ruby reacted to the truth about their rings, Ephram had resolved to offer her more in the way of unvarnished honesty. If Ruby felt she could withstand it, then he was gonna respect her wishes. He’d told her that she could be honest as she wanted with him, too, but in truth Ephram didn’t think that Ruby would. Having been through his own hellish blitz of living with the constant threat of physical and sexual violence, Ephram knew the victim complex it left you with (and when it dovetailed with the demon inhabiting you who wanted to see you suffer, it made for some unspeakably masochistic behaviour).  
  
Ruby’s victim complex was less landmine and more a creeping sickness. It flared up when she was feeling at a loss, making her do dumb things that put her in danger, leading her to become so consumed by whatever the issue was that she was incapable of taking some time and space to emotionally regroup. She spun herself crazy and Ephram hated to see it, especially since he couldn’t prevent or stop it. That was up to Ruby herself.  
  
“I ain’t gonna be able to do nothin’ to draw the boat back.” Ephram rested his hands on his hips, staring out blankly at the yacht before realizing he wasn’t even thinking about the seacraft or its strange circumstances. Sighing again, he looked over at Ruby wondering if he’d missed something, if there’d been some point where he should have intervened and forced the issue between her and Freddie, but then he noticed something that made him frown slightly.  
  
Going down the walkway, Ephram brushed Ruby’s hair back, holding it in his fist as he stared down at the livid bite bruises on her skin. “What’s this?” he asked, even though there could only be the one answer.  
  
The honesty Ruby appreciated. More than she believed Ephram would ever realize. Even if it stung a bit to hear it, that he seemed to think her so incapable and lacking in certain ways, at least it wasn’t clouded with pretty words in an effort not to hurt her feelings. Which she knew Ephram would never do on purpose, if he could help it. Perhaps knowing where she was faulted would help her grow, though her track record wasn’t the best when it came to changing herself. Not for lack of want to, but more from lack of knowing how.  
  
The rings had made Ruby feel foolish once true feelings had been revealed. She felt like she’d ruined Christmas. Ruined everything. She felt like the two people she cared about most in this world had been walking around in utter discomfort for nearly a year. Because of her. And it made her literally ill to think about it. And when Ruby felt that way, her mood often spiraled downwards, and made it hard for her to focus. Hard for her to see the bigger picture, as Ephram knew.  
  
But she was working on it. On finding healthy coping mechanisms. The first step was acceptance, after all. At least that’s what Dr. Martin told her.  
  
And so Ruby had accepted that she’d been wrong to do something so grand, so significant, so emotionally charged, especially as it had involved all of them. Even if all she’d wanted to do was show them how much they meant to her. Reasons didn’t matter. She’d been wrong. And that was the brutal truth of if. And it was a boxed view, yes, in regards to using something like a ring to symbolize love and forever and all that. In that Freddie was entirely right, and Ruby had admitted it to herself whole-heartedly.  
  
But perhaps Freddie and Ephram’s views were a bit skewed as well. In regards to what defined ‘hetero-normative.’ There were plenty of couples - hetero couples - that didn’t bother with rings. It didn’t make Freddie and Ephram wrong, or make their feelings any less important or relevant, and it certainly didn’t change the fact that Ruby should have talked to them about what they might want, if anything. But perhaps it was a slightly boxed view on their part as well, that they could only see such a symbol in that sort of light, instead of trying to see it as something that could exist outside the confinements that they felt Ruby was trying to place on them. Something they could make their own. Or maybe that was just wishful thinking. Which is why she kept the thought to herself for now.  
  
What it came down to is that Ruby only ever wanted Freddie and Ephram to be happy. Because being with someone - loving someone like that - meant that they’re happiness was more important to you than your own. And that was certainly the case here.  
  
So Ruby had been telling the truth when she’d asked for brutal honestly. Brutal honesty over gentle lies. Life wasn’t gentle, and truth… well, it was never, ever vain. It could be beautiful, something you wanted to hold and love and look at endlessly, like a new baby or a loved one you’d been too long without. But it could also be ugly and cruel - like seeing the red mark on a lover’s face after you’d slapped them in anger, or seeing your own blood slipping across your skin after you’d done something foolish - and when it was, it made you wanna tear your eyes away. Or claw them out just so you didn’t have to see what was right in front of you.  
  
So since Ephram was doing as she’d asked - and God she loved him and respected him fiercely for it even as she hated the words themselves - she afforded her husband the same respect.  
  
“I like bein’ human. Ain’t never wanted to be nothin’ else.” Her blue eyes slid over to his, tight around the edges despite the calm way she spoke. “But don’t you tell me I can’t conceive of what’s out there,” Ruby said with an edge to her voice that wasn’t usually there. Beneath the calm. Beneath the nice. A creeping sharpness covered in her soft Carolina drawl. “Or that I don’t know just how vulnerable I am. After all we’ve been through. You. Me. Freddie. Separately and together. After the demon. After David. After Martin. Please don’t stand there and tell me that I don’t know the sorta things that’re waitin’ in the dark.”  
  
Her eyes softened just a bit, because Ephram was right about so many things. And she wasn’t angry with him. Not really. Ruby was under no allusions that she knew about all the things that could hurt her. She was naive, and admitted it.  
  
“That don’t mean I know everythin’. And maybe I ain’t got a lot of walkin’ around sense sometimes,” she agreed. “But I ain’t stupid.” That word had stuck itself in her mind over the last few days since it had been flung at her so sharply. It ate away at her like acid, despite realizing now that Ephram hadn’t been calling her stupid, he’d simply said she’d been acting that way at the time in question.  
  
And maybe she had.  
  
But that was an entirely different conversation.  
  
Though the current one had slipped from the subject of the boat - and the strange events surrounding it’s apparently violent de-docking - even as Ruby stood staring at the vessel in question.  
  
She felt Ephram’s hand brush her hair, pulling it back and to the side. It was slightly unexpected, but not at all unwelcome. For someone who needed to be touched, a lack - or even a lull - of physical affection was like being locked in a cold, dark room with no windows and a barren hearth. And just the brush of a hand could stoke a raging fire that overtook everything.  
  
So when he questioned the marks on her neck, Ruby had no reason to lie. She hadn’t been trying to hide them, nor had she been trying to hide the nearly identical ones on her wrist, or the smaller pinpricks along her breasts, thighs, and belly - shallow nips, and not enough to draw blood - but Ephram hadn’t seen her without her clothes in the last few days.  
  
She looked up into his face, as much as she could with her hair twisted in his hand. His eyes were dark in the light from the sun as it sank behind the trees, deep-seated beneath his brow and the fall of his hair, and focused solely on the fading bruises on her skin. His grip stung slightly, pulling the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck, and Ruby’s pulse gave a tiny flutter in response. She put the slightest bit of tension on his grip, but didn’t try to pull away.  
  
“I needed my head somewhere else for a couple o’ hours,” she answered honestly. “Grace Villier. Down at open mic night. Didn’t go lookin’ for it; I ain’t bein’ that foolish. She bought me a drink, and it… led to other things.”  
  
“Maybe you ain’t never wanted to be naught but human, yeah.” Ephram paused for a few moments, lassoing together groups of information before he spoke again. “But that don’t mean you always been okay with bein’ human. Not when it came to Freddie and me, with how he could use his fairy dust on me and I could mix my magic with his. I know you felt left out, Ruby, don’t try and tell me you didn’t.” Ephram rubbed his hand hard through his hair. “There’s always gonna be things you can't be part of, and you can't help me with. I’m the first Pettaline witch in generations. And I’m a demon.” His voice was strained, pulled out tight as taffy as he leaned towards Ruby. “Conceive of what’s out there? You can't even conceive of what’s _in here_.”  
  
Ephram’s fist rose to thump his chest on those two words, teeth clenched. “You need to check into reality, girl,” he said. “Truth is you _are_ a touch stupid. God knows _I’m_ stupid. It ain’t a goddamn sin, it’s what we are, and the second you make your peace with that then it ain’t gonna knock your knees out from under you no more.” Ephram shrugged, crossing his arms. “Hell, you of all people should know that brains and book learnin’ don’t make for a good person half so much as honesty and compassion do.”  
  
Once he’d said it out loud, Ephram was certain that Ruby would realize that she’d held the same opinion all along. She might have come from a home with high education, but that was even more opportunity to have noticed that smart folks could be abject shitholes of human beings. Dumb and sweet-natured was preferable over clever and heartless any day, in Ephram’s book, and he wagered in hers too.  
  
All that got jumbled and tangled up with the vampire bites, though. Ephram let go of Ruby’s hair, rocking back on his heels. “You could go back to it,” he said, scrunching his nose as if he’d smelled ammonia. “Being a Blood Doll. I’m good with Bellamy now and … well, you could go back to it if you want. I know how you liked it. Letting vampires feed off you.”  
  
Ruby looked up at Ephram, knowing she couldn’t in good conscience deny what he was saying. “Yeah,” she said after a moment of chewing her lip. “Sometimes I have. But it ain’t ever really been about the magic,” she said quietly. There was more to it, of course. Reasons why. Particular situations that had made her feel that way. But it wasn’t for discussing now. Later maybe, when things weren’t so tense.  
  
She let him finish talking, telling her things she’d heard before. Things she knew. And if Ephram knew her at all - which she trusted that he did - he would know how hard it always was for Ruby to just stand by and watch during those times. To stay idle while he was in pain, or struggling, or in need of something that she didn’t have the power to give. And how that translated into her throwing all of herself into the things she _could_ potentially help with. The things she could give.  
  
So Ruby stayed quiet, at least until the end.  
  
Then she looked up, her whole body turning to face him at his declaration. “ _It’s_ a demon. Not you. You’re a victim. Of circumstance and blood, yes. But it ain’t you.”  
  
Her face was edged with hurt, her own voice strained. “I mean, my God, Ephram… do you really think I don’t know who you are by now? You think I don’t see what’s inside you?” She huffed, shaking her head. Her voice softened marginally. “I’ve always seen you, Ephram. Good, bad, ugly… Just like you’ve always seen me. From the start.”  
  
Ruby raised a hand to capture the fist over his chest, her small hand dwarfed by his, and her smaller form jostled a bit by the movement. “I’ve had enough goddamn reality to last five lifetimes. We all have. And I’d never even pretend that I could truly understand what it’s like to live with what you’ve gone through. With what you go through every day. But I have never-” She pushed back against him, ineffective though it was. “- looked away from that darkness that I know is inside you. Demon or no demon. And I ain’t about to start now.”  
  
The words he directed at her revealed more than he was saying out loud. Ruby heard it, heard the underlying truths he believed about himself as well. “Ain’t neither of us stupid,” she said firmly, pushing past the compulsion just to agree with him. Just to say ‘you’re right’ and move on. But Ruby didn’t believe that. Not about either of them. There was ignorance maybe, that came from aspects of their past, and naivety on Ruby’s part, but not the other. So she stubbornly pressed on. “And no, it wouldn’t be no sin if we were. But we ain’t.”  
  
Ruby sighed, and there were a few beats of silence as her words faded out. When they had, she moved both hands and laid them over his crossed arms, closing her eyes as she gave him a firm squeeze. Because Ruby did agree with him about what made a good person. Always had. And whether the comment was meant to describe the two of them, or just one or the other, Ruby wasn’t quite sure. Though it didn’t change the fact that she agreed.  
  
“I’d rather be honest and compassionate any day, and be someone simple - have a simple, gentle life with the people I love - than be cruel and smart.”  
  
He pulled away from her then, and Ruby felt instantly bereft at the loss. “That ain’t who I am no more,” she said of being a Blood Doll, and left it at that. Though she didn’t miss the twisting of his expression as he saw the bite. She tilted her head so her hair fell over the marks, and turned her gaze back to the water, though she didn’t move away from him.  
  
Now it was Ruby’s turn to cross her arms. “Grace was just a distraction. ‘Cause I don’t want or need just some… body in my bed.” She left the statement there. Because there were only two people she cared about lying next to. And she missed them both desperately, even though one of them was standing right next to her.  
  
But, unable to stand still any longer, and still with another pressing issue to deal with, Ruby slipped off her shoes and moved to get the yacht key off the hook on the wall. “I’m gonna swim out and get the boat ‘fore it hits the channel. You comin’?” She looped the key around her neck and started on her jeans.  
  
“It’s me now.” Ephram’s lips were set in a resolute, bleak line. “I can't live without Anaxis and it can't be here without me. So saying I’m not a demon but the victim of one is, at this point, nitpicking.” His expression didn’t change much as Ruby continued, except to get a little weary around the eyes. “It ain’t about that, Ruby, goddammit,” Ephram grumbled. “I know you always accepted me for all the things I am, that ain’t in question. I’m saying that….” he trailed off, not saying much after that and not responding when Ruby insisted that they weren’t stupid. It really wasn’t worth arguing about, especially now.  
  
Instead, he started to strip down as well once Ruby took off her shoes, letting his clothes lie where they dropped until he was just in boxer-briefs. “You should consider being a Blood Doll again,” was all he said as he hung a loop of rope over his shoulder, diving into the water and starting to swim out to the yacht.  
  
Ruby didn’t argue anymore. There was no point. It was old news. Said and done and repeated ad nauseum. She saw the tiredness behind his eyes, and looked away, stripping down and once again feeling like she always made things worse. Jumping in the water after him, she felt a cold that had little to do with the temperature of the frigid sea.  
  
It was a short swim, five minutes maybe, and they were pulling themselves up onto the back of the boat. Ruby’s teeth chattered, but she turned to Ephram as he pulled up beside her.  
  
“Why, Ephram? Why should I go back there?” She was dripping wet, in nothing but her underwear, and Ruby suddenly felt very, very afraid. Her chest tightened, and she felt like she couldn’t breathe.  
  
First Ephram went to one of the chests on the deck and took out two blankets, wrapping one around Ruby and half-toweling, half-wrapping himself in the other. “You don’t gotta go back to Bella’s place,” he said, and sneezed three times in quick succession. “There’s other places to be a Doll. Hell, if you wanted you could have a mobile version of the Exanguination Stations that the Department runs, delivering your blood to shut-in vamps and whatnot.”  
  
Ephram rubbed the blanket over his head before dropping it to the deck, noticing Ruby’s look of utter terror with shocked concern. “Honey?” he said, moving over to her and sitting her down on the closed chest, wrapping her in his discarded blanket too. “You okay?” The water wasn’t cold enough for this, her reaction confused him. “Ruby, please, just … just tell me what you need.”  
  
Ruby snagged the edges of the blanket with the fingertips of one hand as she watched Ephram dry himself off. She frowned a bit at his sneeze, but it passed by in the wake of the tightness pressing on her chest. “I don’t… why are we… why would…” She couldn’t get the words out, so she swallowed them back, biting her tongue and gripping the blanket tighter around herself. Later, what he was saying about the prospect of variations on the theme of what a Blood Doll could be would make sense. And Ruby might even take a solid, professional interest.  
  
But right now her head wasn’t there. It was a thousand miles away, somewhere cold, and lonely, and bleak. She let herself be sat down, and looked up as Ephram wrapped her up again, though the additional blanket didn’t help with the tremors that rippled through her. Her eyes were wide and frightened, and Ruby shook her head - a small, almost timid gesture - that meant no, she wasn’t alright. She wasn’t alright at all.  
  
When he asked what she needed, she pressed her eyes closed, swallowing thickly. “I um… I just-” There was a shaky pause as she bit back the words that she knew sounded selfish. Weak even. Because in her heart, in the rational part of her that knew the man Ephram was, that knew he loved her, Ruby knew the truth.  
  
But she’d promised honesty, no matter what it looked like.  
  
“You,” she finally said. One word, one syllable. “I need _you_. I need to know… that I ain’t gonna lose you… an’ that you need me too, and that as rightfully angry and disappointed… and _tired_ as you are… I need to know… that you still _want_ me… even if Freddie an’ I…” She paused again, sucking air past the pressure crushing her lungs, unable to say the words out loud just yet.  
  
Ephram felt the chill of the water overtake him again as Ruby spoke, her sentences breaking into chunks like an ice floe disintegrating. Almost like she was gasping to get her breath, with that terrified expression and the cowed body language. The reactions of a woman afraid to speak up for fear of being judged and maybe, maybe … something worse.  
  
“Ruby,” Ephram said helplessly, “My loving you was never contingent on whether or not you and Freddie was together. Why would that have anything to do with it?” He crouched down in front of Ruby, moving carefully to take her hands in his own and rubbing them to get her chilly fingers warmed. It wouldn’t be a great idea to make any sudden moves towards her, Ephram felt, not with her in this rabbity headspace.  
  
“Listen,” he said gently but firmly, “listen, you got me. Like I said, I got no plans of going nowhere, and you’re my wife. I love you, honey.”  
  
He _was_ tired. It was wearing to be running interference and setting down edicts and convincing each one of his partners all over again that he loved and cherished them. And it seemed that Ephram had never realized the extent to which Ruby and Freddie had no working conception of anger and disappointment being a normal part of a relationship, surmountable if you could do the work to move past it.  
  
But, Ephram reminded himself as he listened to Ruby’s panicked attempts to breathe normally, they’d both been conditioned to instantly go into a hypervigilant state once an intimate partner showed either of those emotions. He couldn’t fault them too much for it, even if it did raise the general hysteria a couple of notches. “Okay?” Ephram prompted in a quiet voice, peering up at Ruby. “Can you breathe?”  
  
Ruby had never thought Ephram would hurt her. She’d never been afraid of him, not even when they first met. But there was fear, stretched across her entire body, tight as a rubberband. Not of a hand that would bring physical harm, or the pain that Ruby knew would follow, but of the hand that could so very easily find her wanting, find her more of a burden than was worth it, or so very easily tell her she was no longer welcome. That her sins were finally too much.  
  
It wasn’t that she doubted Ephram’s love, it was that in times like this she doubted herself worthy of it. Especially now, with the rends that had split their lives down the middle. Rends and bruises, left partly by Ruby’s own hand. Fingerprints in bone, always there now, littered with the rest, even if the surface wounds healed.  
  
He wrapped her hands in his, and Ruby leaned into him a bit, but didn’t open her eyes just yet. She was grateful for his ease and for his patience, and felt an overwhelming rush of love that nearly took what breath she had left. Another one shuddered through her as she tried to order her thoughts. Tried to place them in some way that they didn’t trip over one another and just make things more confusing. “I hurt him so badly. So badly, and then… then I couldn’t manage to do what was right. By Freddie, or by you. I fucked it all up,” she said slowly as way of explanation.  
  
“And… I was scared… scared you’d come to hate me for all of it - and maybe you do a little and that’s alright; ‘s what I deserve… and I accept it - and that you’d never be able to look at me again and… not see the person who’s caused… so much pain.”  
  
They’d argued and fought before, of course they had, but this… this was an entirely new level of seriousness. This was a level of pain and hurt, for her and for the other people involved, that Ruby had never traversed, despite everything she’d been through in her life. And as Ephram himself surmised, when even the smallest of things rose to such a head in the past - far away as it was becoming - how was she supposed to have any concept of resolution without bloodshed, figurative or not?  
  
So it wasn’t until he assured her - firmly and with no hesitation - that she didn’t have to worry about losing him, that he was there, with her, his wife, that Ruby finally opened her eyes. They were wide and scared, the edges laced with the hard-conditioned fear of years of abuse and neglect, none of which was Ephram’s fault, but which he recognized in Ruby for what it was. And as mire deep and soul-sucking as those fears were, the trust Ruby held for her husband - even though at times she might need a solid and gently forceful reminder, like now - was there too. Swirling like flotsam in the liquid blue with everything else, coaxed slowly but surely back to the surface by Ephram’s words, by his touch and his calm presence, until finally it sparked in the light.  
  
The swirling mess slowed a bit, and everything else started to fade away.  
  
Ruby tipped her forehead to his. “I love you, too.”  
  
It took concentrated effort on her part, and a few minutes more, but Ruby finally calmed herself. “Okay…” she said in a slightly steadier exhale of air. “I’m… I’m alright… promise.”  
  
Ephram listened to Ruby talk, as she chased around the reasons and results as she saw them and was able to process them. It wasn’t that Ephram necessarily disagreed; he saw some points differently but at this stage he was more than content to let Ruby shape her own conclusions.  
  
And truth be told, Ephram was rather at a loss for how he was supposed to answer or react. In his estimation, no matter what happened in his relationships, he was the one who would always be the wild card. What else could he be counted at when he had a demon inside him? Whoever loved him would be living with a constant threat. Anaxis had already attacked both Ruby and Freddie and there was every bit of a chance that it might happen again.  
  
So what was Ruby’s self-recrimination when it compared to that? Ephram could see the fear in her eyes plain as day, shadowed by the ghost of David Johnson. Her abusive ex ruled her still, maybe always would; Ephram had known women with that look back in the Fall and it never really went away.  
  
Ruby kept going about how she was scared that Ephram’s opinion of her would sour, that he’d think only of the disintegration of their relationship when he looked at her. She was scared. She was _scared_ she said, and Ephram knew she was. There was no point in him being stung that Ruby would think him that fickle; fear was overriding any sort of organized thought in her head.  
  
Everything would take time.  
  
“Okay,” Ephram said, nodding slowly. “Okay, honey. If you’re feelin’ up to it we could maybe get the boat back into dock again.”  
  
Ruby hated herself in times like this. Hated the way fear pressed like a rusty, serrated knife through everything she knew, and oozed it’s way in, coating her confidence and her trust and her rationality in a thick layer of sludge. She hated it. Hated who it made her. Hated the reasons why. Because just when she thought she had moved on, that David’s shadow no longer lay long and dark across her path, Ruby tripped over something concealed within that darkness. Something she couldn’t see. Something she couldn’t be prepared for.  
  
Sometimes she came back with a scraped knee, catching herself before she fell completely. Other times, like now, she would fall down a steep, rocky slope, tumbling and sliding until she hit bottom. She would lay there, desperate for breath, bleeding from her most vulnerable spots, too afraid to move because it might hurt more if she did. But then someone - Ephram, in this case - would come along and toss her a rope, encourage her to grab hold, and pull her back up. It might not be easy, and there were sure to be cuts and scrapes and bruises along the way, but eventually she would be at the top again. She would hold tight to the ones that pulled her out of the pit, and do her best to let the injuries from this fall heal. So the next time it happened, she would have thicker skin. She wouldn’t be so vulnerable, or so easily swayed and manipulated by fear.  
  
Especially as the truth of it all looked back at her through Ephram’s storm-cloud eyes. Those eyes that she loved so dearly and so fiercely. Eyes she never equated with what lived inside of him. Though she never forgot it either. To forget would be foolish. But it would also be foolish to let the demon have any more power than it already did.  
  
But that was neither her nor there, and as Ephram gave her a simple recognition of everything, Ruby was able to pull a bit more of herself back to right. “Yeah. Yeah… okay.” She stood, giving his hand a squeeze before heading up the ladder to the bridge. The boat started right up as she turned the engine over, and Ruby waited on all the lights to come on before doing a sweep of the control panel.  
  
“That’s funny…” she pointed to a light on the grid, showing Ephram. “Anchor’s down.” Hitting the button that would draw it back out of the water, there was a moment of silence before the boat gave a small lurch and the light starting flashing. “Goddammit…” Ruby hit the button again, letting the anchor down once more before trying again to bring it up.  
  
Another lurch and flashing lights. “It’s stuck on something,” she said, looking to Ephram. “One of us’ll have to go down and see what it is.” She didn’t relish the idea of diving sixty feet to the bottom of the channel, but unless Ephram had a better idea, or could magic it loose, or had a merm or a selkie on speed dial, someone would have to manually free it. “I got divin’ equipment down below.”  
  
Ruby got up and moving, which was a huge relief, and Ephram followed her to the bridge and the controls, watching her start the motor and toggle with the anchor. Honestly Ephram didn’t like the entire concept of anchors, mountain boy that he was; the idea of something huge and heavy and lifeless just … hanging there in the middle of unfathomable depths was profoundly disturbing. It was with a sinking heart that he watched Ruby trying repeatedly to bring the damn anchor back up, and when she turned to Ephram and gave voice to what he’d been dreading, he pressed his lips together and raised his chin.  
  
“Okay,” Ephram said simply. He’d learned how to scuba while in Greece with Freddie and had gotten pretty capable at it, although not quite to these depths. But he’d been schooled sternly on how not to get the bends (oh, the dirty jokes Freddie made about that turn of phrase) and there was no way on earth he was letting Ruby do it, not with her having been panicking only a few moments earlier and looking and acting like she wanted to die for the past few weeks. That just wasn’t an option.  
  
“My suit’s down there too, right?” There wasn’t actually anywhere else it could be, so Ephram didn’t really need to ask that question. Yet he did, and waited for Ruby to answer. It occurred suddenly to Ephram that _she_ might want to be the one to dive, that she might be feeling guilty or something, so he said quickly, “it’ll be easier for me, especially if it needs some muscle behind it to get free. Besides which I got no clue how to operate this boat.”  
  
The ocean had never frightened Ruby. Maybe it was because she’d been raised on the coast, and spent her childhood swimming and sailing and snorkeling in the warm Carolina waters, finally get SCUBA certified when she was sixteen. The water was comfortable for her, like a second home almost, and even free floating over the fathomless depths, she always felt at peace. Though she knew not everyone felt that way.  
  
“Yeah,” she said, turning the boat off and slipping the key back over her neck, chewing her lip in thought before leading the way below to where the wetsuits and tanks were stored. Ruby knew Ephram had learned to dive in Greece, and had every confidence that he knew what he was doing, but she had originally intended to be the one to go. Not out of guilt, but because she had more experience. Sixty feet was a long way, after all.  
  
It made sense for him to go though, in case the anchor had to be wrestled free from a root or a rock. Ruby just wasn’t physically strong enough. But she couldn’t in good conscience stay here while he went down.  
  
She handed him the wetsuit that would fit him as she laid her own aside, setting the first of the single cylinder packs down and testing the air supply and then the regulator. It hissed loudly in the boat’s interior. “Boat ain’t goin’ nowhere. Besides, you don’t dive alone. ‘Specially at night. This channel is silty at the bottom. Not like Greece. Easy to get turned around and get blinded when you start kickin’ things up.” She pulled out the second tank, testing it the same as the first.  
  
“Let me go with you,” she asked, in case he was utterly dead set against it. “I’m alright. I promise. Ocean ain’t never scared me. Not once.”  
  
“Ain’t so much worried bout the ocean scaring you, Ruby Scarlett,” Ephram grunted as he did up his wetsuit. “More worried bout you getting hurt down there somehow, or having a panic attack. Like I said, you been doing a lil poorly lately, and I don’t just mean you’re under the weather.” He finished up and looked at Ruby, face framed with black. “I mean you’re fragile right now in your head, and in your heart. It’s been taking the energy right out of you.”  
  
Turning, Ephram sat down to pull his flippers on, queasiness turning over in his gut. He wasn’t immune to it either, it seemed. “That’s fine,” he acquiesced. “If you wanna be dive buddies. You’re probably right about things being safer with two of us rather’n one.”  
  
All of his equipment on, Ephram stood again to get his oxygen properly added to complete the scuba gear. “I’ve brought Freddie home,” he said abruptly. “You ain’t seen him because I locked him away on the other side of the house. Don’t try to see him or talk to him, I’m taking care of it.”  
  
He didn’t exactly mean to make it sound as if he was warning Ruby away, but if that was how she interpreted it? Ephram wouldn’t be averse to that.  
  
Ruby worked on her own suit, pausing, eyes cast down at the deck as Ephram gave her his honest truth of how she’d been run straight down to the ground with everything recently. And it hurt, to hear how /fragile/ she seemed, especially after so many months of thinking she was doing well. Or at least better. Perhaps that had just been denial… Ruby making things up to make herself feel better. Maybe she’d never gotten any better at all after everything that had happened to her.  
  
After her sister Jo was killed by David Johnson, the man she'd married.  
  
After she miscarried the potential baby she would have named Abby and then tried to kill herself and then started seeing apparitions of her imagined version of Abby-June.  
  
After David tracked her down to beat her, rape her so she couldn't have children, mutilate her face, and fill her back with birdshot.  
  
After she’d died and been brought back. Twice.  
  
Maybe she /was/ permanently damaged. And she was fooling herself that she’d ever be anything but. Maybe she’d just grown good at pretending, at covering it up, and times like this left her unable to hide anymore.  
  
Or maybe that was just her current state, her fragilities, taking advantage of her insecurities.  
  
She looked over at Ephram, searching his face for a moment before nodding. “I know I ain’t been right. I can…” She zipped up her suit with a sharp yank. “…feel it. Like… all my parts are put together with loose string… just… danglin’ about without any rhyme or reason.”  
  
She tied her hair back as much as she could. “‘S why I been needin’ to do the things I’m good at.” Ruby sighed in relief when he said it was smart not to go alone. She checked her regulator once more - holding the mask (they were the kind that covered your whole face, allowing you to talk to each other through special built in headsets) tight against her skin - before moving to help tighten Ephram’s straps.  
  
When he spoke about Freddie, Ruby’s hands paused in their work. She was momentarily struck, both by the revelation that he was home (and apparently _had been_ ), and that Ephram had him locked away. And wanted her to /stay/ away. Though the latter was no real surprise.  
  
When Ruby managed to finally go back to her work, all she could say was, “Alright.” He had his reasons, she was certain, and Ruby wouldn’t go against such a direct order. Much as it stung, and as much as it bordered on him warning her off for now. “How is he?” she asked quietly, hoping she was at least still allowed such a small thing as the knowledge of Freddie’s well-being. She still loved him very, very much, despite her being the slow poisoning that had killed their relationship, and despite the guilt she would carry for a long, long time. Still… they couldn’t exist forever as if the other didn’t.  
  
Ephram listened to Ruby talk about how she was feeling, that jangled dangling of unsureness and disconnection; he listened to her decide that she needed to get a few wins in order to feel more cohesive. It made sense, in a way, but Ephram couldn’t help feeling that there was something missing. Something that was a fairly important part of the puzzle. He couldn’t come up with what, though, so he kept silent on it as she tightened his straps and whatnot.  
  
Her reaction to hearing about Freddie was impossible to miss. Which was a relief, all things considered, because Ephram was grateful for any clarity that could be had in this whole mess. Though when Ruby’s only response was an obedient ‘alright’ followed by a meek question as to Freddie’s well-being, that just brought up all of Ephram’s concerns again.  
  
“Why d’you do what I tell you to?” Ephram asked suddenly. “You listened when I said you'ns had to split, you’re keeping mum about how you’re feeling now but you’re still saying _all right_ , you’re asking bout Freddie as if I’ll come down on you hard for it.” Ephram looked around unhappily, his head heavy and swinging like a hound’s. “There’s something wrong here, Ruby, and I can't figure out what it is, and it’s got me skittered.”  
  
A resolution seemed far off in coming, so Ephram just moved to the back of the boat. Making sure they had what they needed, he dropped off the side of the yacht and into the water, finding the anchor chain and slowly making his way down along it.  
  
Ruby reacted to the information about Freddie in the only way she thought she was allowed: with quiet acceptance. Not that she didn’t believe Ephram would want her to be honest, but what right did she have anymore to want to see him? Talk to him? When this was all her fault (or so Ruby believed). Her one attempt at communication on Halloween had made her look like a fool. And quite honestly, Ruby was weary to her bones of looking like a fool. It was partly what had gotten them in this mess in the first place.  
  
But along with the weariness, there was also anger. Which she had yet to express in any coherent way. Because what right did she have to be angry with anyone other than herself? Maybe that’s what was missing? Anger. Instead of forced apathy.  
  
Or maybe it was something else.  
  
She looked up from buckling on her own O2 tank as he spoke again. Ruby frowned, unsure what he wanted her to say. “I do what you say ‘cause that’s how we agreed it would be,” she said calmly, a beat passing before she looked back to her tank. “And I’m truly alright with that. Mostly.” She snapped on the weight belt that would help her sink easier, but paused, her fingers fiddling with the clasp. “I got no problem thinkin’ for myself, but certain things…” Ruby shrugged. “You got a stubborn streak a mile wide, darlin’. And when you put your foot down, ain’t no movin’ it sometimes. I think that’s one thing Freddie and I can agree on a hundred percent.”  
  
She started to tell Ephram that she didn’t think he would come down hard on her, but that she simply didn’t know where the line was that she was supposed to stand behind when it came to Freddie. Or if she even wanted to stand behind it, wringing her hands and running herself crazy with worry like some helpless waif. Or of she wanted to say fuck the line and step right over it. Because Ruby loved Freddie dearly. And she didn’t want to lose him forever. Though that seemed like what was happening. What had already happened.  
  
A part of her wondered if Ephram’s decision had been some sort of test. Some sort of… Sphinx riddle that she was supposed to figure out so that she could continue on her journey. She didn’t think he would do that, valuing honesty and upfrontness as he did. But was she supposed to have disagreed like she had wanted to? Fought back? Protested where Freddie had also agreed? Was she supposed to protest when he told her to stay away now?  
  
Ruby felt so confused. And helpless to do anything about the unhappiness and disquiet on her husband’s face. But she didn’t get a chance to say anything else, because Ephram was in the water. Less than a minute later, Ruby followed, flicking on the light on her mask as she moved towards the light from Ephram’s. Her regulator hissed as she spoke into the darkness of the water. “Go slow. Five to ten feet every couple o’ minutes.” Her hands found the anchor chain - which felt slick and oily - about six feet above where Ephram descended, and she followed him down.  
  
The darkness of the water was, oddly, on the side of being comfortable for Ephram. Not entirely, of course – following the big chain down to the creepy anchor kept him on edge – but he had no fear of being in that pressing blackness. He’d felt it every time he’d gone down into the Bonford coal mine and it had helped him through his bouts of solitary confinement in prison; it was the thing keeping him from freaking out now.  
  
As he moved down at a measured pace, he said, “I know I can be stubborn. But you can’t possibly think I wanted that option, that I wanted all this … fuckuppery. It was just the best I could do.” Ephram paused on the chain, waiting for Ruby to come back to her six-foot interval above him. She looked strange up there, some lopsided starfish with a thin rim of white along her edges. “I had to do _something_. The both of you was miserable and couldn’t find no way out of it and I’m head of the household so that made it my responsibility. To take the pressure of making a decision off the both of yours' shoulders.”  
  
Really, Ephram hadn’t thought he was _all_ that stubborn, not as much as Ruby seemed to mention it. But in the end if that was her perception of him then Ephram couldn’t and probably wouldn’t know how to object. He was bad at talking about any finer qualities he might possess even on the best of occasions, much less when things were tense. And Ruby, he knew, found it useful to latch on to certain characteristics once she found them out. Which was great for a while – so long as you didn’t change. Because she wouldn’t be able to shift gears with you. It took her a little longer to mobilize.  
  
Although she was doing it now, the tiny light of her mask getting closer. “It was all I could think to do,” Ephram repeated, more to himself.  
  
The dark bothered Ruby, but only marginally. And only because she couldn’t see very far in the already murky water. She would be able to find her way back up if something happened; the Sun Seeker had running lights of it’s own that shone from the surface. But if for some inexplicable reason she lost Ephram in the dark, she had no way of finding him. No magic or extra senses to call to her aid. That was what bothered her.  
  
“‘Course I don’t think you wanted it,” Ruby said, her voice distorted a bit through the headset. She descended closer to his light, the bubbles from his regulator flowing slowly past her on their way up. “I didn’t want it either,” she said. “Felt like…” She made a discontented noise. “Gettin’ shot hurt less, if we’re bein’ honest.”  
  
Ruby _did_ think Ephram was stubborn. Like a blind mule. But that wasn’t who he was. He was so much more than that. So many beautiful and wonderful things - along with the dark and the depraved - rolled beneath his skin like red clay, changing and moving with whatever life brought around. Ephram was malleable. Ruby… not so much. Her joints were stiff with years of misuse.  
  
Finally coming even with him, Ruby looked over through the slight haze of their masks and the water. “Was more than either of us could manage.” Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to say, but it was the truth.  
  
“Least now there’s a chance the two of us might can… salvage a friendship. ‘Stead of lettin’ it go on longer an’…” Hating each other. Though Ruby didn’t think she could ever hate Freddie, even if she tried.  
  
Beneath her hands, the chain gave a small shudder, and from below a few large bubbles appeared out of the darkness. Ruby grew very still, and pulled closer to the anchor chain and Ephram, pulling her body vertical instead of sticking out into the darkness. “Could just be the boat movin’…” she said quietly.  
  
Ephram made a disgruntled huff to echo her discontent when Ruby compared the feeling of his edict to getting shot. “I know how you feel,” he said shortly. “I know all about how you and Freddie feel, don’t you worry on that count.” There was an irritation inside Ephram’s chest, a grain of sand that got in and was not gonna end up a pearl anytime soon. It would just itch and be gritty and pester him and not let him settle, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.  
  
“The both of you understand _me_ more than you understand each other, is what it is,” Ephram said. “You don’t really get what Freddie’s about, Ruby, and there ain’t no changing that. You reached the top of what you could figure out and it wasn’t never gonna get any clearer for you.” The dark of the water, the liminal space of it, drew the words out of Ephram like osmosis, sent them bubbling through the space between them. He knew he sounded cruel. But it was the truth, a truth only _he’d_ been willing to name for what it was.  
  
“As for Freddie, well.” Ephram looked at Ruby flatly through his mask. “Freddie needs consistency, and praise, and untangling, and indulging, and he ain’t got the first clue bout what he needs so if you don’t figure it out yourself, he gets hurt. He likes folks who’re complicated and observant and for all your other good qualities you ain’t that.”  
  
The movement and bubbles interrupted him, and Ephram moved behind Ruby, his body between hers and the wide, inky water. “You'ns ain’t never gonna be friends,” he said bluntly. “Don’t waste your time trying, Ruby, or you’ll just be acting as _stubborn_ as me.”  
  
Ruby wasn’t sure that Ephram _did_ know how she felt. Other than what she’d said out loud. Other than what he saw, which was a lot, and usually on the money, truth be told. But there were things she didn’t tell anyone, things she’d never told another person, about how she felt and why. Not just about this. But other things as well. Things that chilled her more than the icy water around them.  
  
Ruby had heard everything Ephram was saying before. From his own mouth. And frankly, she was getting tired of hearing about all her failures and short-comings. All the ways that she’d not been able to figure Freddie out. About what he needed and how she’d not been able to give him those things. How she just didn’t _get_ him. Everything coming out of Ephram’s mouth was about Freddie. Every single word. Not once did anything he said make Ruby feel like he blamed anyone but her for what had happened.  
  
And she wanted to ask, what about her? What about what _she_ needed? He had asked her that, hadn’t he? Just a few minutes ago? And she’d told him.  
  
But what about the parts of her that Freddie could never understand? The parts that he’d never wanted to understand. That he found boring and not worth his time? What about the things she’d given up, because Freddie didn’t want them? Like the baby she so desperately needed? Things she’d wanted her whole life, that were just dumped aside because of his wants and his needs? Ruby didn’t think she was a selfish person, but goddammit she was starting to feel like she deserved a bit of selfishness somewhere in her life.  
  
It was cruel, Ruby thought, as Ephram laid down his judgement on the kind of person he thought she was. Or wasn’t. The kind of person that Freddie couldn’t possibly like. And a large part of her wanted to dip her head and agree. But the fact was that she didn’t agree.  
  
“You know… jus’ ‘cause somethin’ comes outta your mouth don’t make it the goddamn gospel truth. And I’m gettin’ real tired of bein’ told what I’m not. How I fall short. How much I don’t understand. How much I hurt him. How little I understand.” The bubbles from her respirator flowed faster as she spoke.  
  
She followed him with her eyes as he moved, and what he said shocked her. And it showed on her face. Though she didn’t try to hide it this time. Why wouldn’t Ephram want her and Freddie to be friends one day? Why wouldn’t he want things to be better between them? Ruby stared at him through her mask. “Never’s a long time, Ephram. But if that’s truly what you believe… if the last year of my life with Freddie, everythin’ we’ve been through, everythin’ we’ve shared, ain’t worth the two of us at least bein’ friends at some point in the future…” She gave him a look that was part hurt, part disbelief, and her hands slipped from the chain. She floated free in the water for a moment.  
  
“Then why am I still here? Why’m I still livin’ in the same house?” More bubbles came up from below, and Ruby noticed them, reaching for the chain once more and pulling back close. “I love you, Ephram, and I can’t imagine spendin’ my life with anyone else, but I am not gonna stay here and feel like an intruder.”  
  
“Of course you’re tired of hearing it! Because you _never actually_ take any of it on board to make any changes and then I gotta say it all over again! I’m fuckin’ _tired_ of saying it, Ruby.” There was a lot he was tired of, and while most of the time Ephram was malleable and adaptable, he’d reached a limit here. “I know you compromised in our relationship, we _all_ had to, but I don’t feel like you … grew with it. I don’t feel like–”  
  
He pumped his feet through the water’s resistance to try and defray his frustration. “You DID hurt him, Ruby! And yeah, he hurt you too, we all had our bouts of hurting each other without meaning to. But the important part ain’t the act of doing it, it’s the effort we put into making it better. Making sure it don’t happen again.” Ephram’s voice drifted lower. “And that _never happened_ when it came to you ‘n him.”  
  
Ruby moved away from the chain, and Ephram could tell from her expression that she was stung by his opinion about her and Freddie. It was an expression that Ruby wore a lot, these days, and Ephram realized with a dull pang that it was starting to not mean anything to him. Ruby’s pain took up so much room and had for so long that there wasn’t space for much else.  
  
“Yeah, it was a helluva year, yeah, I’m not saying it wasn’t,” Ephram said, watching to make sure Ruby didn’t float out of sight. But it made him queasy, this visual representation of the distance he’d felt growing between them. “But people can love real hard and then reach a plateau and I reckon that’s what happened. Is it really so awful to accept that, be grateful for time spent, and move on instead of clinging to it so tight?”  
  
Distracted, Ephram didn’t notice the bubbles and just breathed a little easier as Ruby came back to the chain. “I can't always be answering your questions, Ruby,” he said, weary and sad. “You gotta figure some shit out for your own self.” He shook his head. “I love you too, but I don’t feel like we really … _know_ each other or want the same things no more.”  
  
“Then stop,” she said back, a gurgle of bubbles rising from her mask. “I’m not so inconsiderate, or selfish, or basic that I don’t spend every single day thinkin’ about how I need to change. About how to recognize and stop doin’ all the shit that got us here in the first place. I try… as best I know how.” Ruby swallowed as Ephram’s frustration bubbled over, resisting the urge to say that her best wasn’t good enough.  
  
“I know I did! I know!” Her face scrunched up a bit. “I hurt the one person in this world that deserves it least. I brushed aside the man he was to try and make him who I wanted him to be. He tried. He did. And I didn’t listen. And that is my fault, Ephram. Doesn’t matter why. I did that to him… and it’s affected all of us. And it wasn’t fair to you to have to try and clean up my mess. I know it hurt you. Though we both know I wasn’t gonna end it,” she added quietly, trying to be truthful. “I know that much about myself. And I hate it. Because I should have tried. I should have at least had the fucking courage to try. And I couldn’t.”  
  
Ruby didn’t want to be unhappy. She didn’t want Ephram, or anyone else, to look at her and instantly see pain or sadness. It was simply that she’d lived with it for so long that she was unsure what to do with it other than let it cover her up completely when she felt anything other than a positive emotion. She wouldn’t blame Ephram from growing a bit numb to it all. You could only stick someone with a knife so many times before they just didn’t feel it anymore. Ruby wanted to be happy. She wanted the people she cared about to be happy. She wanted to box away her pain and store it somewhere safe, never forgotten but not taking over everything.  
  
“No, it’s not awful,” Ruby agreed quietly. “Lovin’ Freddie… knowin’ him and havin’ him in my life…” She looked away, blinking. There was a whole list of things she was grateful for, but Ephram knew all of them so she didn’t bother repeating them. “How can I just… leave it all completely behind? How am I supposed to go from what we were… to strangers on the street?”  
  
She pulled close to the chain, needing something to hold so she didn’t feel so lost. “I know I do,” she nodded, not looking at him. Ruby was very aware that there was a long list of things that only she could figure out for herself. And that terrified her, because it would take an honesty that she wasn’t sure she was ready for or capable of. When Ephram finished what he had to say, only then did Ruby look up. Her throat felt tight, and she reached for the neck of her suit, but it was fine. When she put her hand back, she laid it over his wrist, not wanting to feel so far apart from him.  
  
“I don’t think what we want has changed so much. Has it? Some, but not totally. Though… maybe you’re right about the other? Maybe we don’t know each other like we used to.” Ruby sighed, hating that they were under forty feet of water to have this conversation. “I want to know you again, Ephram. I wanna see you laugh and be happy. I want you to have what you need. What you want. And at the same time… I don’t want us to… plateau.”  
  
“Freddie ain’t _the one person in the world_ who deserved it least,” Ephram repeated. “Freddie’s someone who’s been hurt too much before so we tried not to add to it. And wasn’t mightily successful, neither of us, you know I had my moments of hurting him too.” He adjusted his mask, fighting the urge to pull it away from his face for a moment. “I ain’t gonna give you no more advice, Ruby, but I’ll say this one last thing: it’ll make whatever you’re doing a damn sight more achievable if you didn’t see things in such absolutes.”  
  
He told Ruby the same as Freddie: “ _I_ made the decision to tell you'ns to split up, I was ready for that responsibility. What’s wearing on me is that it seems like you’re expecting me to give you a game plan on what to do now. And I don’t know what to tell you.” It was hard for Ephram to understand that Ruby would be helpless to control the aura of suffering that she exuded on a near-constant basis. Not only was he a consummate performer in this one area – hiding pain beneath laconic masculinity – but Ephram had grown up in a town where everybody did the same thing. If you were vulnerable, you did your fuckin’ damnedest to not let anybody see it. Ruby was like an open wound in shark waters.  
  
The questions came, and Ephram didn’t want to answer them and speculate about Ruby’s interactions with Freddie so he just said, “You don’t know how to give folks space, Ruby. You went away to think about yourself and the whole time you was communicating with us. Probably you been trying to talk with Freddie this whole time. That trip you took amounted to a hill of bullcrap because you wasn’t thinking bout your motivations and behaviour at all, just getting wound up in family drama and mysterious threatening markings on the wall.”  
  
She laid her hand on his wrist, and the familiar feeling brought a teensy-tiny swirl of upright to how Ephram was feeling. Although again, it was at odds with other parts of what he was feeling, and he blinked slowly at Ruby as they hung there in the utterly silent darkness.  
  
“I don’t know,” Ephram said, his voice drained of colour. “Maybe it’s been left to go flat between us too long, Ruby. I just can't bring myself to feel no way bout it.”  
  
Ruby didn’t argue Ephram’s rebuttal. Such as it was. As he told her he wasn’t going to be advising her any longer, Ruby felt a bit of a scared flutter in her stomach. But no… no, it was for the best. She did need to figure some things out on her own. Not just figuratively. But quite literally.  
  
“Was always either hurt or not hurt,” she tried to reason after a moment, mostly to herself. “Since I was… I don’t even remember how old I was no more. When he started-” But she stopped, taking a breath, bubbles gurgling up again. Dredging up David was the last thing she wanted to do right now. So she nodded, trying to take what he said, about leaving the thought of absolutes - of no grey between the black and white - behind her, to heart. And to understand what it meant.  
  
“Ain’t what I expect, baby.” Ruby pulled closer, her fins brushing his. “Though…” Her eyes roamed about for a moment before coming back. “I s’pose it does seem that way, me not really knowin’ where to start and all.” She was trying to think objectively about how she’d been acting. About her choices. And what she saw she didn’t like. “And… maybe in a way I was waitin’ on you to give me a push. Or… hopin’ you would. It ain’t… I haven’t ever meant it to seem that way. So no. I know I have to be the one to figure that out.”  
  
Ruby had always had a hard time controlling what she felt. Even with David, as much as she tried to hide her fear and her disgust, he always knew just how to pry it out of her. Just which places to nick to see her start to ooze. The only time she’d succeeded in hiding things from him had been when she was pregnant. And if there was one thing that trumped Ruby’s fear of her then husband, it was fear for her unborn child. And then when she’d escaped that life, and found another one, a better one, where her emotions were valid and she was allowed to express how she felt without fear of harm, it was even harder to suppress. She wished sometimes she could just… turn off. Feel numb, or at least neutral, about things. But Ruby’s emotions either swung wide and high, or short and low. They were big and passionate, like her love and her anger. Or they were small (figuratively speaking) and terrifying, like her insecurities and her fears. Another lesson in absolutes that she needed to learn.  
  
“I texted Freddie on Halloween,” she admitted. “I haven’t spoken to him since. Other than when we’ve passed at home on the rare occasion when he’s come by for things. And then I just happened upon him.” It was the God’s honest truth. “I’ve left him be. Completely.” Her trip home was supposed to give her time to focus on herself, yes. But that hadn’t really happened. Though it hadn’t been a complete loss. She’d made peace with a few things, and done some things she’d been meaning to do, such as visiting Jo’s grave, her old house, and telling her parents about the baby she’d lost.  
  
But that was in the past. Ruby couldn’t change it. No more than Ephram could. But the future could be changed. Or made better at least. For everyone. If Ruby could simply find a place to start. Though at the moment it was more like standing at a crossroads than having any straight, defined path to follow.  
  
His admission of apathy hurt to hear, as did a lot of the things he was saying, true or not, but Ruby tried her best to keep it pushed back. How successful she was, she didn’t know. “I don’t believe that… that’s it’s been too long.” The fingers of her other hand crept into the front straps of his O2 tank, and she gave a small tug, “You are who I care about most in my life. And I know I got things to work on. A lotta things. Big things. Things I don’t expect you to do for me. Things I know you can’t do for me. But without you… without us…” Ruby was close enough now to tip her mask to gently touch his. Her voice wasn’t tearful, but it was wound tight. “What’s the point of any of it?”  
  
“David Johnson. Yeah.” Ephram didn’t want to sound like a callous asshole, but he couldn’t help his kneejerk response to Ruby’s bringing up her ex-husband: no matter what happened, the ghost of David Johnson would always be hanging over Ruby. And with him he’d bring the phantom of the unborn Abby June, the both of them ensuring that Ruby would forever be caught in that year when she escaped her abusive husband and miscarried her baby. “There’s plenty folks in this world gotta deal with hurt or not hurt.”  
  
Still, Ephram clasped his hand over Ruby’s when she clung to his tank strap and insisted that she knew there was a world of things that she needed to first identify and then work on. That was fine enough, but then she reached the point where Ephram’s throat closed up.  
  
 _what’s the point of any of it?_  
  
“I should go down,” Ephram said. “I can use some magic to hound out the anchor, whatever it’s hooked up on.”  
  
He barely waited for Ruby to acknowledge that he was going before swimming down further into the black, spirals of silver-green magic looping around the chain to keep him on track. And when Ephram reached the anchor, he saw the reason for the air bubbles and bloops; the metal was hooked through the bloated, decaying carcass of a sea lion. Maybe it had been knocked senseless by the anchor and subsequently driven to the sea floor, but at this point Ephram didn’t care about the hows and whys. He set about breaking the dead animal apart, knowing that even after he got the anchor free he’d be ascending slowly, slowly, up to the light, much slower than he wanted to.  
  
Ruby had reached the yacht before Ephram did, and as soon as he broke water she hoisted the anchor, coming out onto the deck where he was taking off his mask and thankfully huffing in breaths of non-pressurized air. Ephram thought that Ruby was about to say something, and then that maybe he should say something, but instead their eyes met. And as it had done at many points in their relationship, everything clicked into place.  
  
Neither of them said a word. They didn’t need to.  
  
They both knew they’d reached the end.


End file.
